Police, fire chiefs face staffing challenges

Hiring quality, qualified candidates has been an issue for Police Chief Scott Biddle and Fire Chief Albert Alston for several years.

At the Wilson City Council’s June breakfast meeting, the two chiefs agreed they could fill all their vacancies immediately, but the new hires wouldn’t meet Wilson’s standards. It’s a challenge, City Manager Grant Goings said, that money can’t solve.

“The shortage of police officers is a nationwide issue police departments have been facing for a while,” Biddle told the Times. “It’s become more and more difficult to attract young people into law enforcement careers.”

Alston said first responder jobs just aren’t as attractive as they used to be.

“Difficulties with staffing started for us when the pandemic started,” Alston told the Times. “During that time, first responders were one of the few groups who continued to work in person and often with sick people, and we began to see interest in the profession decline.”

Both chiefs agreed these kinds of staffing issues are not unique to Wilson.

“It’s something that we are seeing nationwide as the outlook of public safety professions changes,” Alston said. “Our biggest challenges are finding qualified applicants with clean backgrounds, retirements and losing tenured firefighters to other departments.”

During the City Council meeting, Goings said seasoned city of Wilson employees, across all departments, are being targeted specifically for their quality by other cities and agencies. Goings said the frustration is how costly it is to train new employees just for them too to eventually leave once they’ve gained experience.

“We typically promote from within, so when we lose tenured employees we not only lose valuable experience, but we also lose the pool to promote to higher levels of leadership,” Alston told the Times. “It is a difficult balance for chiefs to maintain the level of protection while not burning out our employees, but we have been able to meet our minimum staffing requirements and we will continue to do so.”

Biddle said when he agreed to take the role of chief, it came with an agreement to have a succession plan in place.

“Within the last five years, besides myself, we lost our entire command staff, ” Biddle said during the City Council meeting. “That shortage that we have is mainly from retirements. I’ve got two sergeants positions that will have to be filled within the next year. I wanted to make sure we were giving our officers opportunities to grow and to move up within the ranks and get the training, certifications they need.”

Biddle told the Times that having the Explorer Program is one of the resources the Wilson Police Department uses to help young people learn and explore law enforcement as a career. The department has also compromised on certain practices to draw in recruitment. Goings said Chief Biddle hasn’t always allowed officers to grow beards. That change, however, was one that many young potential officers cared about.

During the council meeting, Mayor Carlton Stevens asked the two chiefs if there was anything council could be doing better to support staffing needs. The chiefs shook their heads.

The post Police, fire chiefs face staffing challenges first appeared on Restoration NewsMedia .